Why Was ‘The Good Place’ Creator Michael Schur Nervous About Pitching The Afterlife Show To NBC?

“The Good Place” creator Michael Schur revealed that there were a lot of things that made him nervous during the time he was preparing to pitch his new afterlife show to NBC.

In an interview with The Frame, Schur said that the mere fact that “The Good Place” is set in afterlife was a “risky thing.” “There was the chance that I was going to say, ‘Okay the new show is set in the afterlife.’ And they were going to go like, ‘Nope, try again,’” said Schur, who also co-created NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and FOX’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”

Schur added that he was also worried about the fact that he wanted to make “The Good Place” a serialized show. “In many cases, the episodes pick up in the instant that the previous one left off. That’s a little bit risky for a network show,” the 41-year-old two-time Emmy winner explained. “It’s obviously not risky if you’re on a streaming service because you can just watch it right in a row. But on a show that requires a week of waiting between episodes, that’s a little risky.”

To overcome his nervousness, Schur said that he worked out the entire season before pitching the show’s pilot to the Peacock Network. “I worked on it for months and months to get it all lined up. So by the time I pitched it, if they had questions like about how does this sustain itself, where does it go, what's the future of the show, I was able to answer them,” he said.

In an interview with A.V. Club last September, Schur disclosed that he decided not to pitch “The Good Place” to NBC until he figured out the whole season, after consulting with “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof.

“That was the reason that I didn’t pitch it to NBC until I had the whole idea, because of hearing him [Damon] talk about the process of writing a show that has [similar] qualities [with ‘The Good Place’] and how hard it can be,” Schur said. “I’m so glad that I did that because … when I got the writers together, we laid out the season. We had these tentpoles where we were going and it made it a lot easier to break in the individual episodes.”

New episode of “The Good Place” airs on Thursday, Nov. 3, at 8:30 p.m. on NBC. Check out the synopsis and preview clip for Season 1, Episode 9, entitled “… Someone Like Me as a Member,” below:

“Michael’s (Ted Danson) skills are put to the test when he attempts to sort out an unprecedented situation. Meanwhile, Chidi (William Jackson Harper) makes a connection elsewhere, much to the dismay of Eleanor (Kristen Bell), while Janet (D’Arcy Carden) shows a different side of herself.”